Trust, Hopes, and the Dashing of Both
by MBScavenger1498
Summary: In Stohess, at the intersection of three intertwined stories, Annie makes the painful error of not pulling a sleeping beauty. Character development ensues, or at least the beginnings of it. One-shot: T for language and non-descriptive mutilation/torture. Hints of Eren/Annie, Eren/Mikasa, and Armin/Annie within canon limits. Now has a continuation!


Eren had looked on in swiftly increasing panic as the scene unfolded. Annie had refused to come down the stairs. Annie who he'd trusted. He'd been dumbstruck as Scouts tackled her, as she shifted, as her titan body rose up around her. He hadn't resisted, fought, screamed, or done anything as Mikasa pulled him and Armin down the stairs. He should have been feeling the usual anger, a surge of adrenaline that would divide the world neatly between him and his enemies. He _should_ have been enraged.

But he wasn't. All he could feel was the crushing emptiness of loss. Something was gone. He tried to focus; he had an enemy to fight, but first he had to protect his family. As he bit his hand, trying to shift, he searched for his motivation. _'Capture the traitor. Attack the Female Titan. Protect Armin and Mikasa from… Annie? No, no, not… Just…'_ Somehow his mind wasn't accepting his goals. He couldn't reconcile his target with its face. The emptiness persisted. What the hell was this hollow feeling? What had he lost?

Mikasa and Armin ran off to buy him time and a surge of self-loathing built upon the black hole that had swallowed his anger before it could form. It had been growing ever since they'd started this operation, a hollow, illogical disbelief. Annie couldn't be an enemy. A bit of a hard-ass and sort of selfish, but she was a good person at heart, he was sure of it. So how could she have done all of this? She couldn't possibly justify it!

And then he knew what was gone. He'd been truly betrayed. By a comrade, and worse, a friend. She had reached into him and now, he knew what she had taken. It had been edging out ever since Hans had pulled him away with his mother, ever since his faith in his squad-mates had been so callously destroyed. A hollow space now rested in place of his last shred of innate trust. Finally, his mind caught up with reality and his rage knew where to go. It wasn't some faceless, traitorous titan he had to attack; it was Annie.

The first time she'd gone after Eren, Annie had been cautiously hopeful, and a bit exhilarated, though she felt some guilt for the later. Eren would be mad at first. Livid, she was sure, but if she could just get him away from the humans, if she could just explain it all to him, maybe he would understand. Once he knew, he might forgive her. Nothing but the setting would change; she would be home, and one way or another, he'd be there with her. As she'd fought through soldier after soldier, her hope had begun to slip, along with her conscience. She made it look easy, but plowing through the Scouting Legion wasn't exactly a walk in the park, especially if she expected to catch up with Eren. The trap and her defeat at the hands of Humanity's Strongest Soldier hadn't exactly helped.

This time was different. There was no slow buildup, no vast army to combat, but all the same, she couldn't get away with him and she knew it. She'd failed; failed her comrades, failed Eren, failed her father. But she'd be damned if she would go down without trying.

As the fight had slogged on, she'd panicked more and more. Eren was losing himself just like last time, succumbing to his titan-form's rage. At this rate, he might actually kill her. She'd never get to explain, never see her father again. He was overpowering and outlasting her. A bit of pride mixed with her utter terror. She'd done a good job teaching him. Now if only it hadn't come back to bite her, she would have been content.

But she wasn't. She was swiftly losing a fight she'd had no chance of winning in the first place, not with a complete victory anyway. Finally, she gave into the instincts that for the last few minutes had been screaming for her to run. Her fingers hardened and she slammed them into the wall, disregarding the loss of her leg as Eren tried to stop her. She might be able to make it, if she could just reach the top.

Then blood squirted as blades spun and phantom pain replaced Annie's false fingers. Her eyes leaked tears as she felt gravity pulling her through the air. Mikasa's eyes had a habit of communicating the emotions her face didn't, but for once her feelings were plain to see; calm, smug, almost carefree _triumph_. Whatever strange competition with Annie she'd created in her mind, Mikasa had finally, unequivocally won, and she was savoring that victory.

Against her vehement wishes, Annie obeyed Mikasa's calm words and fell, all the way down to the hard, sun-warmed ground. The pain of impact was dull and immaterial through her titan body, her despair already starting to degrade her connection to its nerves. An angry rumbling growl accompanied Eren as he half limped, half bounded over, his foot still not quite regenerated. Even as she tried to move, stand, run, _anything_, he pinned her enormous shell to the ground, heavy breath and skin burning against her giant form. His teeth pierced the nape of its neck and Annie felt a cool breeze brush against her tear-streaked face. She should have been resisting, hiding, trying to run, but for a crucial moment, she didn't. As he reached down and pulled her out, the world abruptly shrunk down to its normal scale and she opened her eyes.

The first things she saw were Eren's irises; his gaze was angry liquid green fire, so much brighter, but no less focused than his human eyes. The rest of his face was a patchwork of rapidly evaporating blood and burning wounds, healing far faster than should have been possible on that scale. He glared down at her, and she felt his grip trembling, just barely loose enough that she wasn't crushed into a bloody smear on his palm. The accusation and betrayal in the gaze was palpable and she wondered why he hadn't just killed her already.

Eren's jaws parted and an unearthly, raging roar left them, sending her hair whipping back. Her eyes shot wide and finally, her terror broke, her mind coming full circle. Eren's lipless mouth wasn't suited for words, but it got across the anguished, enraged, accusatory question just fine: **'Why?'**

It was strange, Hanji considered, having an enemy who could change their face. In the cumulative hour or so that she'd interacted with Annie Leonhardt, the blonde had mostly been a Titan, a giant, inhuman and undeniably evil juggernaut tearing through her comrades like so many irritating cob-webs. Her skinless, intimidating form had been easy to detach and think clinically of.

This girl whom Hanji now confronted was a different beast altogether. She was small, almost fragile-looking (almost being the operative word) like a hornet that you could squash so easily but would sting you relentlessly even as you did so. Even with the scars of titan integration still upon her face, tear streaks had been plain on her skin when the legionnaires had brought her in. Beyond the similarities in facial structure and hair color, it was hard to reconcile the two forms, which was making cutting through her shoulder joint with a wood-saw a much more guilty exercise than the Scouting Legion's resident mad scientist had anticipated.

Like a dam finally giving way, a long-suppressed scream escaped Annie's mouth and Hanji stopped, wrenching the saw out of her with a loud crunching squish that would have her happy in any other situation. She bent down and looked directly at the girl's thoroughly battered face, expression in its usual cheerful and slightly unhinged smile. "If you tell me who sent you, I can stop for the day." Annie's eyes held nothing but seething hatred as she met the older woman's gaze. The blonde didn't make any quips or insult her. She just stared back; for a moment, the hiss of steam rising from her numerous wounds became the only sound in the room.

Hanji sighed exasperatedly and picked up a crowbar from her small table. She was getting nowhere and learning nothing, which always left her annoyed. Upside: it made the torture easier.

Since the day he'd first sparred with her, Eren had always thought of Annie as a strong person. Whether in terms of personality, or martial arts, he'd seen in her a person head and shoulders above himself and most others he'd met, at least in respect to her fortitude. Her stoic nature had made her a challenge, and he'd come to respect her for the small bits of true personality that had occasionally shone through her cold, disinterested facade.

Or maybe it was because she'd beaten the shit out of him constantly. In the end, it was neither here nor there, because this person before him was just about as far from impressive as a human could get.

Eren's former teacher and friend was splayed out on the floor of a stone cell, wrists and ankles bound by thick manacles, stripped of her boots, military jacket and harness and looking generally as though she'd been put through a meat grinder. Evidently, Hanji hadn't been keen on a humane interrogation.

"Annie." No response. Eren turned to his friends. Mikasa just shrugged and then returned her glare to the grimy wall. She'd been acting strangely ever since he'd decided to visit Annie in her cell. Armin was regarding Annie with a carefully professional expression, the sort he adopted when he was analyzing something and couldn't find a solution.

"Annie!" Eren's shout finally got her to raise her head. For a second, their eyes met. Her apathetic stare was lacking its usual sharp edge. Eren's fists clenched; he couldn't stand those eyes. The deep blue irises held nothing but sarcastic defeat. Something in him snapped. "God fucking dammit!"

Even Eren didn't really see his punch coming. It connected squarely with her face, re-breaking her recently healed nose. On his knees in front of her, he used his other hand to pin her down and drew back for another punch. Some part of his brain heard Armin gasp and take a step forward, but Mikasa held him back with a strong grip, a similar blank apathy shadowing her face. Eren was pissed. He was angry that she'd killed Levi's squad. He was angry that she'd tried to kidnap him. He was absolutely _livid_ that she'd been a traitor in the first place. Beating her in Stohess had taken the edge off of his compounded rage, but now, with her in front of him, it exploded outward.

KRACK! "You've fucking given up, haven't you?" KRACK! "You think you can just surrender like that after everything you've done, after all the _people_ you killed, that you betrayed?! You think you have the right?!" His next blow smashed into her ribs. "You're stronger than this! Anyone who could do what you've done must be stronger than fucking _this_!"

Eren was breathing heavy, more from his emotions than the actual beating. Annie turned her head and spat out some blood before leveling her emotionless glare on Eren. His enraged advance had put them almost nose-to-nose. One of her eyes was already starting to swell and even more blood was trailing from her mouth. His angry expression slipped into a dead frown as he stumbled back into a standing lean against the opposite wall.

It was Armin finally spoke up, voice shaking as he broke the awkward silence. "Annie… They're going to kill you, maybe not today, but soon, whether you give them information or not." For a moment it seemed as though Annie might react, her mouth opening slightly and her eyes focusing on Armin, but the expression passed just as fast as it had come. Her voice was gravely and hoarse from too much screaming, as she turned her head to Armin and Mikasa. "Why are you all wasting your time? I'd kill me if I were in your situation, it isn't exactly a grand revelation." Then she smirked, which was quite creepy with her bruised and bloodied countenance. "Honestly, I don't even know why she's here; I never took you for one to taunt your prey once it was dead, Ackerman."

Mikasa's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, but she didn't make any move to retaliate at the pronouncement. Eren looked back and forth between the two girls, as though he were only just seeing them both for the first time. Finally, his eyes came back to Annie, who's gaze was now downcast. Her lips were quirked in a sad shadow of a smile, eyes hooded and shadowed by her blood-caked bangs. "I almost had you. You might have lived if the short one hadn't turned up." She looked back up and Eren realized that she knew she was dead. She'd known it the moment he'd beaten her. Now, she didn't have anything to lose. "They'll play nice for now… You're useful, but so are horses and that doesn't stop people from putting them down when they aren't."

Eren glared back at her and Mikasa's grip on Armin's arm tightened to painful strength, but despite the anger and doubt those words had dug up, very little happened.

Armin was smart enough to have come to that conclusion a while ago. He wasn't the idea guy for nothing; he'd long since planned for such an eventuality. Considering the moves already made against Eren by the Military Police, someone in power would be after them soon, with or against the Scouting Legion.

For all his dense single-mindedness, Eren wasn't an idiot, and he certainly wasn't blindly trusting. This latest betrayal had assuredly washed him clean of that last bit of mental baby fat. One of his best friends had turned out to be a mass-murdering enemy combatant; it wasn't a fact he'd be forgetting any time soon.

Mikasa had never liked Annie in the first place and took exception to the idea that she couldn't protect Eren, even if she'd failed to do so once already. Even if she wasn't there, there were a million others that would need to be outsmarted or outgunned to take him away. It wasn't about to happen.

"I've seen enough. We're going." Without another word, Mikasa dragged Armin out of the cell and Eren moved to follow. As he neared the door, he cast a look back at Annie, enemy, teacher and distant, sarcastic, betraying asshole of a friend. She looked back at him, and for a moment, he though he might have seen the ghost of a hopeful smile on her face. But then it was gone, like a lightning strike, and her eyes were the same dead apathetic orbs they'd always been, her lips a thin, not-quite-frowning line of soft pink skin. The door slammed behind him and he didn't look back.


End file.
